I find it odd to blame DAFs rather than the absurd tax laws that enable them. There are several oddities in our tax laws: - extremely generous treatment of do

I find it odd to blame DAFs rather than the absurd tax laws that enable them. There are several oddities in our tax laws: - extremely generous treatment of donating long term appreciated property. You deduct the FMV and also avoid paying capital gains tax. I have yet to understand why we think it is good policy to offer both advantages. Allowing only basis to be deducted (as is case for short term) seems much more reasonable. - our tax system has a standard deduction that itemizations must go over to see benefits - we have a progressive tax system that doesn't smooth over multiple years of unsteady income. I've been a big user of one myself, contributing heavily in a year of an IPO (abnormally high income plus lots of highly appreciated stock). Using a Daf allowed me to have more time to vet target charities; if they didn't exist, I would have still donated heavily in the IPO year (because the tax benefits are leveraging my donations), just less efficiently (less vetting). Point being, the way our tax system handles charitable donations is what is "unfairly" benefiting the rich; DAFs are just a symptom.